


Whatever And Ever, Amen

by prospitianknightmares



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Childhood Memories, Gen, One Shot, Other, da-bada-doo-da i'm projecting baby!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-04-01 01:37:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13987707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prospitianknightmares/pseuds/prospitianknightmares
Summary: Grif's personality is the behavioural equivilant of waking up an hour early to get your bedhead exactly right.





	Whatever And Ever, Amen

**Author's Note:**

> i named this fic after a ben folds album

Dex's mom would get kind of irritating when she was still around, y'know, actually bothering to talk to him. She’d give him these annoying little passive-aggressive minispeeches on all the little ways he’s doing school and learning and making friends wrong even though she lets Kai get off scot-free with three times she shit he does, because she thinks she’s the only mom in the world with a kid who’s on the spectrum, and it’s really fucking annoying. He liked it better when she didn’t bother pretending to care.

He had his strategies, and a lot of them stuck. He's pretty much an expert at calling as little attention to himself as possible. 

It's easier now than when he was 12 and got dragged off to the principals office because some poor kid got punched in the gut when he oh-so-helpfully tried to put his hand on his shoulder while he was hunched over crying in the corner during P.E, even though he'd told him to go away, like, seven times already. Yeah, it's easier to just let himself drift towards the edge of the room and play white noise from his headphones to block out the sound of sneaker squeaks, let his brain fill with static while he watches the rest of the class play Bullrush. His mom gets told during parent-teacher meetings that her son isn't participating in group activities. He doesn't sign up for any sports teams, 'forgets ' to bring his gym kit and gets ‘sick’ every year exactly on the day they’re doing cross-country. Because he's lazy, remember?

Dex absolutely does not have the personality of a Drama Kid, but it is his favourite subject. The ultimate blow-off class (-oop, there’s the laziness again.) It's so easy. He sees everyone else giving typical high-school-drama-class level performances and wonders what they aren't getting. Outside of class they're smooth, confident, natural- he's made reciting the "hi, how are you, good, thanks" script an art form in it's own right, practiced talking in front of the mirror, studied videos on how to capture realistic body language in your animation even though he's not planning on becoming an animator anytime soon. Acting is just an extension of that. Slip out of character and into a new one. Easy-peasy. He assumes that's what everyone else is doing. 

He learns how to sit still and keep his hands folded across his chest tightly but not too tightly, just the right amount of tightness, and keep his legs together and fold himself over like a little sadness omelette when he sat. He perfects his "i'm a bored teen who doesn't care about anything, ever" look. It's method acting. Nod along absentmindedly when people talk, even if you truly, honestly don’t give a shit, and force your eyes to lock onto whatever part of their face feels less awkward to look at, like on the poster in his classroom- “LISTEN. Look at speaker, Idle your mouth, Sit still, Turn to speaker, Everyone quite, Noise level: Zero.”

He learns how to best slip the casual "hi, how are you, good, thanks" in at the beginning of every conversation like a pro because it's easiest to spend his lunchtimes drifting from table-to-table, maintaining whatever the bare minimum surface-friendship requirement is with whichever little highschool clique he felt like mingling with on that day. It kinda sucks, but it beats being That Guy. He passed that role onto some other poor shmuck who spent all his free schooltime in the corner of the library doing whatever it was he does on his phone with a bulky pair of headphones over his ears. He’s glad he’s not That Guy anymore. (No one wants to be That Guy.)

\-------------------------------------

Caboose is kind of weird. Okay, understatement of the year, he’s pretty fucking weird. There’s a lot of weird things about him. Weird in a particular way. Stuff most people don’t notice, but Grif does. He’s got that weird bunny-arm pose with his arms held up to his chest when he’s standing around, crouches on the edge of chairs like a cherub on the peak of a fountain, and when he gets excited he’ll curl his hands up and make a kind of fanning-twirling motion near his shoulders. Grif notices that stuff. No one else does because, y’know, he’s Caboose, whatever.

Usually, “you remind me of myself as a child” is supposed to be a compliment, but in this case, it’s not. Not really an insult, either. It’s not the right choice of words, actually- Caboose reminds Grif of what he could’ve been if he was a different kind of child. 

Yeah, must be nice.


End file.
